jcwinterton (06/10/82)
is still a hack! Or to put it another way, people who write or modify programs on an ad hoc basis than wonder why nobody appreciates the brilliant new trick they have introduced are hacks, hackers, or whatever other pejorative term you care to hang on them. On the other hand, the term "hack" has come to mean something rather complement- ry in some contexts (hacker may be read for hack). The important distinction between the pejorative sense and the other is whether the result is useful, and understandable by the regular, often naive user of the system(s) on which the results of hacking are found. If you are one of those who believes that the documentation of a program is its listing, then you belong to the pejorative group. Anyone who has tried to maintain a program written by one of these types will tell you that they can't usually figure out why or in what context some of the identifiers were chosen, or what the abbreviation style has been in the past. I have had maintenance people come to me in near tears with the request that they be allowed to rewrite some programs to the specification only to have to tell them that the specification doesn't exist be cause my predecessor was a superannuated hack! Grrrr. You know who you are, out there! I think the people who truly are "hacks" in the U of Waterloo sense (complimentary) should be called something else. How about "programmers"? John Winterton
djmdavies (06/10/82)
Obviously, as someone else said here recently, we have two different
definitions (or concepts) hiding under the terms hack/hacker. I recall
feeling mildly surprised on reading the MIT/Stanford hacker's Dictionary
to find that 'Hacker' has been invested with a positive aura in that
context. Interesting that the positive aura has subsequently spread
(perhaps via ARPAnet for the most part, plus word of mouth) to a
significant slice of USENET and some other parts of U.S. Computer Sci
establishment.
The whole dispute as to the 'true' meaning strikes me as a classic
example of evolution in language use. Wonder if any sociolinguists
have noticed the possibilities of using computer message networks
to collect raw data on language shifts. I also wonder if anyone
can comment from personal knowledge on the context in which 'hacker'
first became a 'good' word. Was it originally a we-hackers-stick-
together reaction by (mainly AI) students who were being put down
as 'mere hackers' by others... And later the people concerned learn
to work in more discipline ways, and retain the label out of pride and
a bit of rebellion (perhaps, against snap judgements)... and now
other people take the term up. ? Anyone know?
I have to say that I can accept 'hacker' as a 'good' word, as
used by certain individuals, but it still by default retains a
perjorative force for me.davidson (06/11/82)
John Winterton suggests that it is improper for the documentation of a program to simply be its listing. I am unclear as to whether he means the user documentation or the maintainers documentation. If the former, then I certainly agree; however, if he means the latter, then I think that his view is only sometimes correct. A code of a good programmer, writing in a decent high level language (e.g., Pascal, Modula-2, even Ada and LISP [augmented with appropriate macros]) is self documenting, and has the virtue that it always correctly describes the current version of the program. -Greg Davidson
burt (06/14/82)
Greg Davidson argues that the code for a good program should be
self-documenting. Perhaps this is true for programs, but it is not
true for bigger things (systems). The poor maintainer of systems
needs all the help he can get to understand his charge, and a one metre
(3 foot) pile of listings is rarely enough.
(If any of you have good ideas on what sort of help maintenance
programmers *do* need, I would be interested in hearing them.)
Burt Patkau
...!decvax!utzoo!utcsrgv!burttugs (07/07/82)
I hope that when you used the phrase "hackers in the U of Waterloo (complimentary)
sense", you weren't implying that Waterloo has never had any of the
perjorative variety... Believe me, it has.
A Former UW Systems Programmer